Almughavars!

 As the UK has been recently basking in weather more suited to the beaches of Barcelona, it seems a good time to share some "test painted" Catalan Almughavars from the Lurkio range, now being produced by Gripping Beast.

I'd always had a vague idea of getting myself a Catalan army at some point, mainly as it's a fairly unique army with the unique troop type of Almughavar. 

However the large number of Almughavars needed (of course...) don't really morph into anything else, so it had stayed on the back burner for ages - until a Lurkio "almost closing down sale" a while back tempted me  to grab a bargain with 3 sets of 24 Almughavars at a discount price giving me all I could ever need and more. 

And these are the jolly little chaps - rather "hobbity" if I may say, but not without their own charm and looking somewhat similar in style to some of the Baueda ranges too (so maybe the same sculptor?).

A I wasn't entirely taken with the sculpts, rather than paint all 72 in one go I decided to just do 24 of the more static-posed ones, and to experiment with a mostly contrast paints style to see if I could bang them out quickly and be done with them.  

As most of my other Medievals are traditionally painted with black undercoat, I wasn't sure if doing these in Contrasts would work well together with some of my existing Knights and other morphed troops who make up the rest of the Catalan army.

Having tidied them up, matt varnished them and added basing they look OK - this lot are a bit hard to judge in some ways as these are all the static poses, so there isn't much dynamism.

  

From the back you can see the quite nice way the Hardened Leather Speedpaint has worked for the belts to pick them out and do a bit of almost blacklining for me. 

I ended up overpainting some of the contrasts with "highlights" of normal paints too in the end to try and beef up the otherwise rather washed out colours. 

There are people out there who swear blind that Almughavars shouldn't have shields, but there are just too many of these guys with shields to leave the shielded ones out. 

Painting them was a bit of a dilemma too, as the shields are too tiny for me to even attempt any sort of heraldic pattern, so I just went for some simple "Catalan" stripes in the end. 

I'm pleased with how they have come out in the end, as I didn't have high hopes for these guys after seeing the castings - buyers remorse for not just spending the extra dosh to buy the far better Eureka ones I think - but they are decent enough given the price point they were at in the "closing down" sale. 

At full price from Gripping Beast these guys are now about 68p a figure, with the Eureka ones not much more at 75p each, making it a bit of a no brainer to go Eureka IMO

Either way, at 67p or 75p, I doubt I'd have ever bought an army's worth of Almughavars, so these hobbity chaps are as good as it's ever going to get for an army I may only use a handful of times!

The Khurasanians go to Spain !

 In these 6 all new, all singing and flamenco-dancing battle reports you can thrill, gasp, gag and feel mildy queasy all at the same time as you read the epic tale of how a 15mm Khurasanian army fared as it took to the stage at an international ADLG event held in sunny Spain back in April of this year.

As usual there are plenty of nonsensical historical "facts" (ahem) about the armies in play, a smattering of vaguely related videos, and loads of pictures of 15mm toy soldiers verbally harassing both me, and one another.

This time however the Khursanian army is commanded by none other than Frank Zappa alter-ego Sheikh Yabouti, leading to some rather hippie-esque post match analysis, including almost enough 1970's references to make up for the near-total lack of self-reflection and self-awareness of his own role in his many downfalls. 

Nasty Medieval Hannibal also has his say as a counterpoint to the Sheikh's nonsense - and as usual he lands far more punches than he pulls. 

In a brand new, international-reader-friendly initiative I have (OK, AI has..) managed to translate all 6 of the reports into the languages of my opponents (3 into Spanish, 1 into German, 1 into Portuguese and 1 into....Australian!) 

So, pop a shrimp on the barbie, pull up a chair, slice yourself a chorizo, break open the Hob-nobs and pop a tinned sardine on top as you prepare to read through all 6 (or 7, if you also read the Australian one) Madaxeman battle reports! 

• Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid    (also in Spanish)
• Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire     (also in German)
• Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire    (also in Portuguese)
• Game 4 Khurasanian vs Wars of the Roses   (also in Spanish)
• Game 5 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire   (also in Spanish)
• Game 6 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance  (and also in Australian)

(Over the next few days and weeks I will also be publishing some Spanish Military Tourism videos, using photos taken during our trip to Madrid and the surrounding towns, so look out for that as well) 

The Persians are Coming!

Last month my mostly-Legio Heroica 15mm Sassanid Persian army fought its way out of the Bisley storage cabinet* for the first time in almost 8 years (!!) to conduct a 5-battle campaign against a number of fairly historical foes at the Roll Call competition in Cranfield.

All of the many highs (and lows) of this sequence of military misadventures have now been painstakingly captured and lovingly crafted into a semi-coherent wordy and verbose narrative for your delight and delectation, and are even now available on Madaxeman.com.

These include three battles against the Sassanids arch-enemies the Byzantines, as well as a Sassanid Civil War and a somewhat time travelling faceoff against the might of the Fatimid Caliphate.

You'll see Elephants, Camels, fierce hill tribesmen and well-drilled Roman-style cavalry whirling across a number of tabletops, all with the added bonus of all of the in-stream historical videos, dreadful puns, partially-relevant animated GIFs, and vague attempts to explain the rules of the game that you may by now have come to love and dread in equal measure. 

There are - of course - also a great many photos in which you can see what the soldiers are saying and thinking on the tabletop, blatantly false and self-congratulatory summaries of the battle from the Great Shah, and all topped off with the usual bitingly acerbic analysis from Hannibal himself.

So, pour yourself a cup of Iranian tea and get ready to dunk into the un-digestive-able narrative that is 5 all new Sassanid Persian battle reports on Madaxeman.com!  

(* That link to eBay is an Affiliate Link. If you buy something after following it I get a small commission from eBay)

3D Printed Numidians

 Another week, another dabble with 3D printed models.

This time it is some 15mm Numidian cavalry from the 3D Breed March to Hell range, which I picked up as I have never really been happy with the mix of Essex, Baueda and Old Glory Numidians that I already own. 

So, having flogged off some of the metals as part of an eBay sale I then spent some of my ill-gotten eBay gains to pick up some of these prints mostly to see what this now well-established and well-known design shop (is that the right wording?) could offer. 

And here are the results:

I did this as a set of 4 to see how they worked initially.

Horses are mostly done in GW Contrasts - Aggaros Dunes, Gore-Grunta Fur, Templar Black and then the grey is Warlords Speeedpaint Holy White.

The rope "bridle" is also a Speedpaint, hardened leather - all done with white base coat.  

The horses are lovely sculpts - the riders come as separate pieces and I was immediately fearful of the spears as they are thin and rather brittle, to the point I was a little nervous about snipping off some of the "flash" even with a sprue cutter. 

 

These chaps have rather luxurious hair - David Ginola must have had Numidan ancestors somewhere down the line! 

They are a well animated bunch and take paint nicely too... however ... 

... whilst taking them outside for some spray matt varnish I dropped them onto a wooden floor from I guess just over 3 feet up... and this was the sad outcome:

 Yes, every single one broke off its base at the ankles, with a couple also suffering further damage to the horses legs - some very tiny bits of which I knew immediately that I would never find. 

One of the riders also lost the upper part of a set of javelins which he was holding in his shield hand too - but that I did spot and managed to reattach.

To be fair they all went together again with some superglue pretty easily, but that does no doubt mean they could also break again pretty easily too. I've therefore put only minimal magnabase on the bottoms of these units, as they don't need to be desparately gripping the bottom of the tin to stay in place as the figures are so lightweight anyway. 

Once I start doing the full set of 24 my plan is to try and base them up such that the horses and riders can be glued together at some hard-to-see point, giving the entire base a bit of extra stability and structural integrity in the process.

So, in summary, these are very nice figures, and a real upgrade on my rather old metals - but the combination of "materials" and "design" for these 3D prints still perhaps isn't quite there as yet to make them robust enough for butterfingered wargamers like me!

The Skoutatoi

If you'd been worried that I hadn't posted any pictures of Byzantines in 15mm for a couple of weeks, then worry no more, as here come the Skoutatoi for my Byantine army! 

FiB tend to chuck in a couple of extra figures into each "24" blister pack, to leave the officers and standard bearers as extras.  

I used the extras up by making a couple of bases with 5 spearmen in the front rank rather than the usual 4, with the theory that I can occasionally use these bases as "supported spearmen", or just call them even more Skoutatoi as needed, depending on the design of the army list.

Shields are of course LBMS transfers, sold to me by Forged in Battle. 

This padded armour is Warlord Games Blood Red from their Speedpaint set.

TheLBMS transfers are smaller than the shields by some margin, so these blue 'blokes face' ones I painted in with a dark blue (and also a mached red) up to the edges of the shields.

This armour is GW Aggaros Dunes contrast type paint. One of my favourite contrast colours. 

These rather odd looking shield transfers seem to be missing a bit  - possibly a cutout for a shield boss? 

Anyways, as they too didn't reach to the edge of the shield I painted in a red edge to each shield before sticking on the transfer (which already has a red edge...)

That also didn't really look right, so I then added an outer edge of yellow with an AK paint pen, which I am finding is much easier to use for touchup than a brush.

This armour is GW Militarum Green - a contrast type paint.

Viewed from above this close up you can see a load of casting lines that I perhaps should have spent more time shaving off .. but, "three foot rule" and all that I guess ?!

An extra shield transfer was cut down and used for the standard bearer. 

Museum Z-Range Gallowglass

 Earlier this year I dithered for a while before just sneaking into the end of the Museum Miniatures January sale to pick up some mail-clad, axe-waving figures to use as Galloglass / Galloghalich / Gallogalisghaghs / whatever, those post-Viking 2-handed axemen who feature in Irish and Scottish armies of the early Medieval period. 

I've been using Vikings for these guys when I've dropped an army on table, but it isn't quite right and with some decent looking figures in Museum's new Z range Saxons that looked like they would fit I decided to drop some cash and buy on in there with some packs of 15/ASX13 Dark Ages double handed axe plus a few more Saxon range figures for added variety (as the ASX13 only has 3 poses) 

I decided to go old-school with these and paint them up with a black undercoat and "normal" paints, partly just to make sure I could remember how to do it in this age of Contrasts and Washes! 

They start off on lolly sticks with a Halfords black undercoat, and the main colours you can see here are:

• Vallejo Ivory (the off-white)
• Warlord Fanatic White
• Warlord Army Green
• Warlord Abomination Gore (dark red) 
• Warlord Fanatic Gunmetal
• Warlord Fanatic Leather Brown
• Warlord Deep Blue

Given this is a fairly limited pallette I was quite pleased with the mix of coherence and variety this set of paints achieved.

The first really surprising thing about these figures was that they all have shields on their backs! 

Having looked again at the pictures of the renders on Museum's site, you can just about make out the shields, but I'd honestly not noticed them when I bought them, as all of the shots are taken from the front angle of the figures which very much hides the shields. 

This is a mixed blessing - being Galloglass I didn't really want them to have shields, but then again my opponent won't really see them anyway ... and I will get to see my own handiwork in painting them, which is a rare bonus too! 

From the front..

Quite different from the front and the back! 

And here are the "lightbox" photos of the finished set.

Overall I'm really pleased with them. Unlike some recent Museum purchases the casting on these really does stand up to scrutiny and matches the quality and detail of the 3D renders on the site - even if my own painting can't meet that same standard!

One final note of weirdness was that I had left out some figures from this batch, as they mostly had very distinctive "Saxon" helmets, and were mostly spear-armed. 

I undercoated these leftovers in white to see what they would have looked like done in Contrasts, and that's when I noticed that some of the figures seemed to be a very different scale to the rest - notably the little trumpeter in the same pack (15/ASX91 Anglo Saxon Med Command) as a much larger axeman and spearman 

You can see the trumpeter, and the three guys to the left of him in this photo all from the same pack and range  - all of the spearmen here are much bigger than the childlike trumpeter. 

I used another trumpeter figure in with the main set of figures and he doesn't look out of place or scale at all, so I'm not quiet sure why these spearmen are so huge when figures in the same range (and pack!) are much larger?

Who knows.. !